The terrible previews before Ghostbusters: 07/23/16

Today I saw Ghostbusters with my husband, our son, and our daughter. The four of us loved the film. More on that later though.

Before the film started, we had to sit through the usual run of trailers. I foolishly thought there might be some films advertised that I would be interested in. With one exception, the answer was a decided, roaring No!

The previews were dripping with toxic masculinity. They weren't just male oriented action flicks, they were chest beating, weapons wielding, manly to the point of being laughable.

The first one was for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk about a young soldier returning home a hero from Iraq. The trailer is five minutes of explosions (either on the battlefield or as fireworks) and men in uniform (either military or football). And there is the beautiful teenaged girlfriend so lucky to have her hero home.

The second one was for the latest Jason Bourne flick. It opens with a behind the scenes interview with the director saying how his crew is like a big family and it's like a band getting back together. And then it's scenes from the film where the world is ending and Jason Borne who has been out beating the crap out of men in a FIght Club in the desert somewhere is called back into service because he's their "Million Dollar Weapon". Doesn't matter that he's fucked up in the head. He's a super, masculine, fighting machine.

Next up was Inferno which I recognized from the very first frame because I've read the book. But ugh, it's Tom Hanks, super professor! He was never the right person for the role and he continues to completely wrong. The book, too, was pretty stupid, so I guess it's a race to the bottom.

Why have one Tom Hanks trailer when you can have two?! On the heels of Inferno came Sully which looks like the worst, most manipulative, mansplainy retelling of the events where Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed his plane in the Hudson river after a flock of birds took out all the engines during take off. After he came out pro-union (and everyone involved in this success were union members) he was suddenly a pariah. So now there's a biopic to show what really happened (aka right wing Hollywood making up shit). And there's Tom Hanks with his sad face to make this atrocity look legit.

Next came a the military loves Independence Day Insurgence advert. Okay...

Finally there was film that is vaguely on topic with Ghostbusters — Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. My daughter, who knows it's a book series said she doesn't want to see the movie but she does want to read the book. I'm with her on that. The series is still on my TBR pile.

I don't know if it's cluelessness on the part of the distributors packaging up the film with trailers or if it's another sign of the fake fanboy misogyny that seems hell bent on plaguing this film like a bad case of psoriasis, but these ads are insulting to a film that breaks the voyeur / voyeuse cliche, gives women a film to be characters without being sex objects, where mothers and daughters are able to geek out together.

So here, instead, are my proposed list of trailers.

Finding Dory (2016)

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)

Pete's Dragon (2016)

Moana (2016)

Queen of Katwe (2016)

Monster Trucks (2017)

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